Best Dog Training Treats

The best training treat is the one your dog swallows in about a second, in a piece the size of a pea, without leaving crumbs or grease behind. Everything else, the flavor, the shape, the name on the bag, is secondary to those four things.

That is why this guide gives you criteria and not a ranked list. A ranking is out of date when the next bag arrives, and a dog's opinion changes with the weather. Criteria let you judge any bag in your hand.

What makes a treat good for training

Training is a lot of small repetitions. A good treat has to disappear fast, so the dog is working, not chewing; it has to be small enough that fifty of them are not a meal; and it has to be worth the effort, so the dog looks up for the next one.

That gives you a short list to test any treat against:

• Pieces per ounce: count them out of the bag once. More pieces from the same weight means more rewards.
• Swallow time: watch how many seconds the dog spends on one piece.
• Crumbs: tip the pouch out after a walk and see what is in the bottom.
• Grease: press one piece on a paper towel and look for a mark.
• Interest: whether the dog looks at the pouch or at you.

Interest is the one that matters most in the field. A treat that wins on size and loses on interest is a treat your dog will ignore on a distracting street.

Run the tests with an unopened bag and a small bowl. Count out twenty pieces, and note how many fit in an ounce of weight if you have a kitchen scale. Then hand ten to your dog, one at a time, in your living room. If the dog takes all ten with the same enthusiasm, the treat has passed the first test. If the interest fades by the fifth, it will not last a walk.

Size: the pea rule and why it works

A training treat is about the size of a pea. It is an old rule of thumb, and it works for a plain reason: a pea sized piece is gone in one swallow, and a dog that is not chewing is a dog still paying attention.

Smaller is fine. A toy breed can work for a piece half that size, and a very large dog can have one slightly bigger. What matters is that the dog does not stop to chew, since a long chew breaks the rhythm of a session.

Do the arithmetic once. USDA FoodData Central lists cheddar cheese at about 4 calories per gram, so a piece that weighs a quarter of a gram is about one calorie, and fifty such pieces come to roughly fifty calories. Freeze dried cheese has had its water taken out, so a gram of it carries more than a gram of fresh cheese; read the calorie line on the bag you own and divide it by the number of pieces you count.

VCA, the animal hospital group, puts treats at about 10 percent of a dog's daily calories, and small pieces are how a long session stays inside that share.

Crumble, grease and the pocket test

A treat is only as good as what it does in your pocket. Crumble is the first problem: a brittle treat turns to dust in a jacket pocket, and a pocket of dust pays no one. Grease is the second: a soft or oily treat leaves a mark on your coat and your hand, and it smears on the pouch.

Run the pocket test once. Put a handful in a jacket pocket, walk for half an hour, then look. If the pocket holds whole pieces, the treat travels. If it holds dust, you are carrying a bag of crumbs.

A treat that crumbles can still work if you mean it to. Freeze dried cubes break into small pieces between two fingers, which is useful when you want pea size from a larger cube. Break them over your hand, and keep the dust for dinner.

Soft, freeze dried or crunchy for each kind of session

Soft treats are the fast ones. They are swallowed with no chewing, they are easy to tear into tiny pieces, and they suit a session where the dog has to repeat a cue quickly. The trade off is that soft treats are fast but greasy in a pouch.

Freeze dried treats are the light ones. They weigh almost nothing, so a pouch holds a lot of rewards, and most dogs eat them quickly. They crumble, so keep them in a pouch with a firm base.

Crunchy treats are the slow ones. They suit a quiet session at home, where the dog can sit and chew, and they are not the treat for a recall in a park.

Texture also changes with the weather. A soft treat goes sticky in a hot pocket and a crunchy one picks up moisture on a wet day, so a pouch that seals does more than any single flavor.

Choose by session. A recall in a busy place needs a fast, strong treat. A down stay on the kitchen floor can use a plain crunchy one. A new skill at home can use anything the dog works for.

Building a two treat system

Keep two kinds in your pocket: an everyday treat for easy work and a better one for hard work. The everyday treat is the one the dog does not mind; the better treat is the one it would cross a room for.

Two house treats fit the idea. Sniff and Shift freeze dries cheddar cheese bites, made with New York cheese and sold in an 8 ounce bag, and beef heart, a single ingredient from Pennsylvania farm beef sold in 1.5, 3 and 6 ounce bags, both in small batches in Malvern, Pennsylvania.

Use the cheese as the everyday treat and the heart as the better one, or the other way round if your dog disagrees. Your dog gets a vote, and the vote can change by the week.

A common mistake is to use the better treat for everything. A dog that is always paid in gold stops finding it special, so keep it for the hard moments: a recall off leash, a new place, a skill the dog is still learning.

Whatever you pick, keep a separate small pouch for each, so the treats do not mix. For puppies, see puppy training treats; for a cheese in more detail, can dogs eat cheese; and for the full range, the dog training treats collection.

Common questions

How small should a training treat be?

About the size of a pea for a medium dog, smaller for a small one, and a little larger for a very big dog. The dog should swallow it in a second without chewing. If it needs chewing, the session stops while the dog works on the treat.

How many training treats can a dog have in a session?

Count the pieces before you start, and take the total out of the day's food if you can. VCA Hospitals advises keeping treats to a small share of daily calories, so a long session needs smaller pieces, not more of them.

Are soft or crunchy treats better for training?

Soft treats are swallowed faster, which keeps a session moving. Crunchy treats take longer to eat and leave crumbs, so they suit a slow session at home. Keeping one of each covers both kinds of session.

Do I need different treats for different dogs?

Often yes. A dog that is bored by a familiar treat may work harder for a different one, and a small dog needs smaller pieces than a large one. Keep a low value treat for easy work and a better one for hard work.